by John Welwood
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Product Description
How can we connect the spiritual realizations of Buddhism with the psychological insights of the West? In Toward a Psychology of Awakening John Welwood addresses this question with comprehensiveness and depth. Along the way he shows how meditative awareness can help us develop more dynamic and vital relationships and how psychotherapy can help us embody spiritual realization more fully in everyday life. Welwood's psychology of awakening brings together the three major dimensions of human experience: personal, interpersonal, and suprapersonal, in one overall framework of understanding and practice.
Amazon.com Review
Have you ever noticed that self-described spiritual people are not necessarily all that easy to be with? John Welwood has a term for what often happens--spiritual bypassing. This is when a person reaches for the stars while forgetting about the goop on his shoes. Welwood, author of the popular Love and Awakening and Journey of the Heart has made a profession out of bringing East and West together, integrating the path to enlightenment with the techniques of psychotherapy. In Toward a Psychology of Awakening, Welwood integrates a series of his articles written over a period of 30 years in an attempt to explain the dynamics of psychologies East and West. The hope is that, combined, they can create a wholeness that encompasses the various levels of human experience. Since many of these articles were written for specialist readers, they won't have the verve and inspiration of Welwood's other books, but Welwood fans and enthusiasts of transpersonal psychology will be delighted to have all these ground-breaking articles together in one place. So go ahead and reach for the stars--just don't forget that you still have to slog through the mire with the rest of us. --Brian Bruya
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Half a book, 2008-08-31
This is an excellent book on the theory of enlightenment. I have asked numerous Buddhists of differing denominations, what is enlightenment, and few have been able to give me a straight answer. Some acted like it was a supernatural state of being that was impossible to achieve unless you were destined to achieve it in this lifetime. Others claimed that enlightenment was undefinable and only the one enlightened would know if they were (of course, if the only person who could tell they were enlightened was themselves, enlightenment was no more than a self-delusion). Without understanding what enlightenment is, there is no reason for anyone to wish to be enlightened.
John Welwood does an excellent job at explaining the state of enlightenment. John clarifies the distinction between being non-existent and the non-existence of the self, since they are not the same thing. John shows how the source of suffering can be caused by the split between our perceptions of reality and reality itself. We think we know reality when all we really know is our are mis-perceptions of reality created by the constant filtering of reality by the ego. We live in a dream world of our own re-making and whenever our dream world clashes with actual reality, reality always wins, and we suffer as a result. We need to awaken and start trying to see reality as it is instead of what we wish it were like. This is what enlightenment is -- awakening from suffering and the games people play and the misperception of reality -- but although many try, few succeed in ever attaining it. There are many things to distract a person from ever reaching that goal so it takes belief, desire, and a little guidance, from time-to-time, from someone 'higher up' than ourselves. John believes the next step in conscious or psychological evolution is going to be in the realm of passionate relationships and devotes a third of the book to this topic. He gives a good case for this belief, one that shoe horns nicely into the theories of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. In other words, by concentrating on fully conscious, passionate relationships, we have the greatest chance of reaching enlightenment today.
This is all excellent material except for one thing: theory is nice but theory is all talk and no action. Passionate relationships is only half of the equation and John is a heavy promoter of meditation -- the other half of the equation -- yet he offers no guidance whatsoever on how to meditate. His excuse? Psychological therapy and meditation do not mix -- to which I say, what a stupid excuse! I've tried John's method of meditation, which he describes as focusing on the silence between thoughts, and all that happens to me is I fall asleep. So why did I give this book five stars, despite this glaring omission and blunder? Because the theory is well thought out, easy to understand, and confirmed by demonstrable facts -- much more so than many other books I've read on the topic. This book is a great compliment to HOW TO SEE YOURSELF AS YOU REALLY ARE by the Dalai Lama, a book which goes into exquisite detail on how to meditate.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Not everything is solved on the meditation cushion, 2008-02-16
Most folks who join a Buddhist center in the West likely have a combination of psychological pain and spiritual angst, and it is often difficult to sort out which is which. There are many Western Buddhists with years of meditation practice under their belts, but who nevertheless feel anxious about their so-called negative emotions and who, in some part of their minds, hold doubts about their worthiness as human beings. Unfortunately, these folks are wary of psychotherapy and labor under the delusion that more meditation, more community service, and a stricter adherence to the Buddhist precepts will "cure" this state of affairs. It won't. As John Welwood points out in *Toward a Psychology of Awakening*, most Westerners have grown up in modern societies in which obtaining stable, meaningful work, engaging in significant long-term relationships and belonging to supportive communities are tasks that were much easier achieved by their grandparents than by themselves. Thus, meditation practice in and of itself is never sufficient to attain wholeness. Welwood shows us that it is only by acknowledging our wounds and fully opening to being present with ourselves will we begin the slow task of integrating ourselves with our experience--a task which in many cases will necessitate psychotherapy. This book complements Rob Preece's *The Wisdom of Imperfection* and Harvey B. Aronson's *Buddhist Practice on Western Ground* very nicely.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
More intellectual than John Welwood's more popular books on relationship, 2006-10-09
TOWARD A PSYCHOLOGY OF AWAKENING is a dense book that describes the path of spiritual transformation from both an Eastern and Western perspective. Its primary value lies in trying to synthesize these two ways of looking at reality and describes in detail how each path informs the other.
Many paradigms both East and West aren't necessarily integrative for many modern people. This book is an attempt to provide a more holistic worldview that reconciles psychology with Buddhist insights into human nature, love and transformation.
There is also a good section on relationship as a path. I think this is an important area to address because something arises in intersubjective experience that has emergent qualities that transcend each individual. In other words, things like love, compassion and community. We can only be fully human when we are fully engaged with others in a conscious manner. This book discusses these issues and does a great job of it.
Many people won't find this book an easy read. It contains a lot of material and it explores many ideas in-depth. It also attempts to synthesize a lot of material in a brief space. However, if you have a deep interest in psychology or Buddhism, you will discover a treasure trove of good information and innovative ways of bringing it together.
If you are not very familiar with Western Psychology or Buddhism, but have a deep interest in personal and spiritual growth, you will still get a lot out of this book. However, you may find it a slower read and will undoubtedly have to take time to assimilate all of the concepts. It will be well worth the effort, but this isn't a superficial bedtime story.
Overall, I give this book my highest recommendation. It is original, well-organized, and well thought out. It is an important contribution in the area of psychological and spiritual growth and the relationship between them.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
 Well written & argued, 2005-08-04
The author integrates Western Psychology & Eastern Spirituality (Tantric Buddhism) in a highly readable book--p. xix: "I have chosen to discuss East & West, psychotherapy, meditation, Buddhist psychology in broad terms, without focusing on the different schools & perspectives w/i these traditions." He has a lyrical style; provides good analogies (Buber's egg to chicken story p. 248), balances opposites, & relates the 2 paths/domains into "psycho-spiritual development." This book is personal, inspired by p. xv "Witnessing the contradiction where spiritual teachers & students who clearly had developed a certain level of genuine spiritual insight & awareness nevertheless remained stuck in unwholesome personality patterns-was both troubling & revealing," demonstrating pp. 11-2: "spiritual bypassing" = "to use spiritual practices to bypass or avoid dealing with certain personal or emotional `unfinished business'...trying to use spirituality to shore up developmental deficiencies." He states that p. 24: "personality is a frozen form of our true nature" & p. 231: "Intimate relationship as a path of awakening." Per Tantric Buddhism's "love affair between absolute & relative truth," he asserts the need to integrate realizations to actualize them--we need to grow up (psychologically) as well as wake up (spiritually), avoiding codependence while pursuing selflessness. Thus, he differentiates between soul work & spiritual work, stating that the West is pioneering new possibilities through the personal (individuation) & the interpersonal (e.g. intimate relationships). He has fine observations On Thoughts: p. 31: "Our thoughts act as a kind of glue that holds our identity structure together" & p. 190: we get "hijacked by our thoughts" On Love: p. 251: "Unconditional love does not imply that a relationship must take a particular form. We may love someone deeply, yet still be unable to live with that person" & p. 253 (quoting) "Unconditional love & support can be damaging to the development of a child's self-esteem" & On Healing: p. 145: "The full presence of our being is healing in & of itself."
But some neologisms are redundant: unfolding, Horizontal/Vertical shifts, & chaos resemble Kuhn's paradigms & the unfreezing/freezing process; "Moment of World Collapse" resembles St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul. Despite a Sources section, some quotes only give the author. IMHO he has a pro-feeling/anti-thinking bias--his assertions on thoughts also apply to emotions, seems sight-oriented (persons perceive more with one sense than others), & often refers to people's p. 183 "basic goodness" (cf. M. Scott Peck's "People of the Lie"). His differencing of "submit" & "surrender" isn't in Websters, he fails to note that complementary psychological & spiritual work resembles a yin-yang balancing, & his "meditation" means Shamatha, not Vipashyana. He says p. 293, Part I, Intro., note 1: "strictly speaking there is no Eastern "Psychology" in the Western sense of the term: the objective study of psyche, self, & behavior as they develop through time," agreeing with Jung & profusely uses Jung's term "individuation," but seems p. 63 to confuse unknowable with unknown, ignores Jung's synchronicity & Self, & decries Western psychology's p. 95 determinism. His knowledge of Jung seems limited. He's correct regarding Jung's defining consciousness only by the ego, but Jung's ego-inclusive Self could IMHO become conscious like Castaneda's 2nd Attention. While I didn't find much new in this work, its presentation & insight greatly overshadow its relatively minor deficiencies.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
very good, 2005-05-22
This was one of the first spiritually inclined books i've ever read and was rather hard to get my head around some of the information. Along with the big words :), however i stuck with it and this book really has helped me loads and its one of those books which i keep going back to and reading again.
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